Ryan Magargle Carnegie Mellon University

Modeling and Simulation of Microfluidic Circuits

Microfluidic systems have contributed to advances in many important applications such as DNA analysis, ecological monitoring, drug discovery, chemical synthesis, and more. These microfluidic systems are commonly fabricated as chips on glass or plastic substrates, which consist of miniaturized channels used to manipulate fluids for the purpose of biological or chemical tests. The channels are designed as sub-systems to perform the various functions needed for the different types of analysis. Complex systems can have many connected sub-systems to perform sequential and parallel analyses. In order to design such systems for a desired functionality, conventional methods use continuum simulation of the partial differential equations governing the system mechanics. These computationally intensive simulations do not work well with iterative methods used to optimize a design. This creates a need for new modeling and simulation methods to allow computer aided design of more complex microfluidic systems.

This seminar will present an overview of the composable modeling and simulation approaches used to treat continuum microfluidic systems as discrete circuits of interconnected components. These approaches allow for rapid and accurate simulation, making design optimization and other computer aided design techniques feasible for microfluidic circuits.

Bio:

Currently a Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh PA, Ryan Magargle is a member of the SYNBIOSYS group in the MEMS Lab. He obtained a B.S. from Bucknell University, Lewisburg PA, in 2001, and a M.S. from Carnegie Mellon in 2003. His research interests include modeling, simulation, and design for electromagnetic and microfluidic systems.